PESHAWAR, Oct 8: Ann E. W. Stone, a renowned US entrepreneur, in a meeting with businessmen from the NWFP revealed that women entrepreneurs were the real strength of the US economy as they were running small businesses successfully and creating jobs at the same time.

“Women entrepreneurs are part of the big secret behind the US’s strong economy and the other part of the secret is education,” Ms Ann said while underlining the need for an educated populace to utilise the national potential.

She said Pakistan should increase its literacy rate to utilise the potential of its population of women.

Ms Ann, who opened her first company in March 1982, set out not only to be a financial success but also to change the marketplace for the better. She has founded many companies dealing with advertising, campaign strategy, public affairs and has launched a national bank too.

While sharing her experiences, ‘moments of embarrassment’, and problems she faced being a businesswoman, she proudly said that it were women entrepreneurs running small businesses who were behind the founding of one of the world’s biggest economies — the US.

She proudly said: “Forty-five per cent of jobs in America are being created by women-owned businesses.”

Ann, who has been goodwill ambassador to several countries since the 2000 presidential elections and has appeared on TV shows to speak on entrepreneurship, politics and women in the Republican party and a variety of women issues, gave tips to businesswomen from the NWFP who were trying their luck in different fields like education, restaurants and garments business.

She gave them professional advice on how to hire a qualified staff to meet certain needs and how to run the affairs of a company while heading it.

Sharing her achievements, Ann told the gathering that she was one of the co-founders of the National Women’s History Museum in the USA.

Women’s history and achievements was left out of the history books so we are trying to document those women who created history but were left out.

She said the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM), founded in 1996, is an educational institution dedicated to preserving, interpreting, and celebrating the diverse historic contributions of women, and integrating this rich heritage fully into our nation’s history, adding that the NWHM promotes women’s history through its temporary exhibits, special events, cyber museum and online educational materials.

She named some women who had remained unknown despite their contribution in the fields of computers, music, nuclear fission, medicine, etc.

She urged Pakistani women to also start a women’s history movement to discover the history of their women.